Jason Aldean’s Wife Brittany Looks Back on Las Vegas Massacre ‘Nightmare’ on 3-Year-Anniversary

Thursday marked the three-year anniversary of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, during which 60 people were killed during the Route 91 Harvest music festival across the street from the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Country superstar Jason Aldean was performing during the shooting and called it the “worst day of our lives” in his memorial post this week. His wife, Brittany Aldean, shared her own memories of the shooting, which happened while she was eight months pregnant.

In her post, Brittany noted how it seems like the shooting happened “an eternity ago,” but the memories remain vivid. The shooting happened exactly two months before their son Memphis was born, and that day started like any other day for the Aldeans, with Aldean preparing to perform. “I used to live in Vegas so I had a bunch of friends at the show… little did we know our lives would change forever,” Brittany wrote. “The sound, the chaos, the overwhelming sadness, and heartache… it’s something that never leaves you.”

Brittany noted how survivors of the shooting feel “forever bonded” as members of the Route 91 family. “An experience that thankfully only certain people know. We have LOVED meeting so many of you who were [affected] on this day, years ago. Our hearts still break for the families who lost a loved one,” Brittany wrote. “We are thinking of each and every one of you today, and every day… and to the men and women who ran towards the bullets to protect all of us… WE ARE FOREVER GRATEFUL.”

Aldean was just performing the last songs of the night when a gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. The shooting remains the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. It resulted in the banning of bump stocks, which the gunman used to increase the rate of firing. Authorities found the gunman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the shooting and his motive remains unknown. More than 400 people were wounded by gunfire and hundreds more were injured during the panic.

In a speech at a Nashville radio event last year, Aldean said meeting victims a week after the shooting was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” When he performed his first full Vegas show since the shooting in December 2019, he again met with victims. “I left with a whole new feeling about the whole thing, and I was so glad I went,” he said meeting victims for the first time. “It was one of those eye-opening, life-changing days that I’ll never forget.”